The end of the car as we know it

The world’s biggest oil producers are starting to take electric vehicles seriously as a long-term threat, Bloomberg noted in July.

OPEC quintupled its forecast for sales of plug-in EVs, and oil producers from ExxonMobil to BP also revised up their outlooks in the past year, according to a study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance released July 14. The London-based researcher expects those cars to reduce oil demand 8 million barrels by 2040, more than the current combined production of Iran and Iraq.

“Growing popularity of EVs increases the risk that oil demand will stagnate in the decades ahead, raising questions about the more than $700 billion a year that’s flowing into fossil-fuel industries,” Bloomberg reported. “While the oil producers’ outlook isn’t nearly as aggressive as BNEF’s, the numbers indicate an acceleration in the number of EVs likely to be in the global fleet.”

OPEC raised its 2040 EV fleet prediction to 266 million from the 46 million it anticipated a year ago. Battery cars under the new projection account for 12% of the market within 23 years, compared to 2% in the 2015 forecast. BP anticipates 100 million EVs on the road by 2035, a 40% increase in its outlook compared with a year ago.

But the threat may have more to do with driverless technology than electric vehicles. Even more startling was a spring report released by RethinkX, an independent research group with headquarters in San Francisco and London, which predicts a historic revolution in transportation that would end the era of individual vehicle ownership … and that would come even sooner.

The report, Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030: The Disruption of Transportation and the Collapse of the ICE Vehicle and Oil Industries, provides a detailed analysis of data, market, consumer and regulatory dynamics. It finds that within 10 years of the regulatory approval of driverless vehicles:

• 95% of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles (A-EVs) owned by companies providing transport as a service (TaaS).

• A-EVs engaged in TaaS will make up 60% of U.S vehicle stock.

• the number of passenger vehicles on American roads will drop from 247 million in 2020 to 44 million in 2030.

While the researchers envision a total disruption of the “car value chain,” it is not lost on them what this would mean for the oil industry. “For the oil industry, the widespread shift away from individual gas-powered vehicles and toward electric, shared autonomous vehicles will be catastrophic. Global oil demand will peak at 100 million barrels per day by 2020, dropping to 70 million barrels per day by 2030. This will impact different companies and countries disproportionately—and in many cases, dramatically—depending on their exposure to high-cost oil.”

Will Americans be so quick to give up their beloved individually owned vehicles? Maybe not. But stay tuned.

Sorry, but cars require roads which require maintenance. Think road surfacing, steel, bridges, concrete, potholes. We can’t afford to maintain what we have now. Our infrastructure has a D grade. We need a Trillion dollars to make it acceptable. It will never be fixed. Also, your pollution doesn’t end. Think worn tires, brake dust, car fluids, plastic, etc. Then we would have pranksters dumping a load of roofing nails onto our highways and all traffic stopping. Or crooks putting out a few traffic cones on the highway, stopping all traffic and robbing them. This EV dream ain’t going to happen, no way. The plain old gas car can’t survive for the same reasons. It’s not the car or the gas, but the cost of maintenance that will kill these dreams.

Makati1 on Wed, 23rd Aug 2017 8:55 pm

Bob, this is nothing more than a techie ad. No real thought put into it. Just hopium in large doses. No thought to the things you mentioned because it would spoil he dream. No oil, no roads, bridges, etc. Same for all techie dreams of “alternates”. Not possible without oil.

And, yes, the car age is about over. What will replace it will ne muscle power. You will mot go farther than you can walk or ride an animal, if you have one. IF humans survive another decade or so, it will be a totally different world. Closer to the 3rd world than the 1st.

Apneaman on Wed, 23rd Aug 2017 9:02 pm

ExxonMobil ‘double speak’ on climate laid bare

“ExxonMobil knowingly misled the public for decades about the danger climate change poses to a warming world and the company’s long-term viability, according to a peer-reviewed study, released on Wednesday, of research and statements by the US oil giant.

An analysis of nearly 200 documents spanning decades found that four-fifths of scientific studies and internal memos acknowledged global warming is real and caused by humans, while the same proportion of hundreds of paid editorials in major US newspapers over the same period cast deep doubt on these widely accepted facts.”

It’s actually the end of civilization as you know it and that will include the end of your kids and other loved ones lives. The timing might have been different, but we’ll never know thanks to the lying by the secretary of state when he was CEO of Exxon and the lying of other oily cunts and their paid for propagandists. Oh and lets not forget the efforts of the true believer armature denier tards too – their punishment will be knowing the destruction of their families and country was helped along by their stupidity and gullibility.

Study: Earth’s temperature record was broken three years in a row, and you can thank humans for that

“The Earth’s temperature record was broken in 2014, 2015 and again in 2016, and a new study by Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann shows that the odds of that happening without human-caused global warming are, literally, one-in-a-million.”

Scum fucks like rockman like to lay the blame 100% on consumer choice, but since choices are based on available information and rockman and the kings of cancer spent a billion dollars a year for decades lying to the consumer-public that excuse is invalid. It’s possible that they would have made the exact same consumer choice even if they had not been lied to and manipulated with those yearly billion dollar misinformation campaigns, but again, we will never know because the lies took the choice away. Don’t be surprised when the climate chaos is really bad and grieving folks start looking for pay back. Can you imagine if the left wingnuts like those antifatasses come to power what they will do to the guilty? Just look at radical left wingnut history. They have more blood on their hands in the last few centuries then any other fanatic gang of monkey people.

You can take away my 460 cubic inch
1978 Lincoln Continental when you pry
my cold dead fingers off the tilt steering wheel.

Go Speed Racer on Wed, 23rd Aug 2017 10:58 pm

Sleep Apnea, you shouldn’t insult Mr Rockman.
He probably looks like Les Schwab, and drives
a white Cadillac convertible with steer horns on
the hood. And lived in an 8000 sq ft house all paid for with oil drilling.
What’s not to like about that.

Go Speed Racer on Wed, 23rd Aug 2017 10:59 pm

Clogster… LOL like.

Apneaman on Wed, 23rd Aug 2017 11:45 pm

GSR, my dad used to go across the border to Bellingham and get cheaper priced tires from Les Schwab. Rub a bit of dirt on them before the border crossings so the customs officer don’t notice them and charge you duty. Daddy loved him some discount Goodyear’s.

One really should wonder what this recent ‘peak demand’ media circus frenzy is really all about. One thing for certain, when they start repeating the bullshit this fast and furious, there is always a hidden agenda. Stay tuned.

Davy on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 12:25 am

Well, these are some nice ideas of a fake green future of techno confusion. All we have now is forecasts and half-baked grids. A-EV’s are even more remote an idea with not even mixed up to be baked ideas. It’s the economy stupid. It will take a huge investment to get there. To make those investments work dramatic change is needed on multiple levels. Technology must come together and all this must happen simultaneously as we leave fossil fuels. There is a cost to leaving fossil fuels. There is a cost to replacing the infrastructure.

Personally I feel these costs are too great considering we have systematic economic dislocations ahead the likes we have not experienced. The 08 crisis will have been a different animal when the next one hits. What we will need to happen may be beyond what globalism can accommodate. Let’s say we can power through this next crisis then yes we have to try to go renewable and transport is part of that equation. The problem with this is a 100% renewable world is just theoretical. Personally I don’t see it but I do see an extended fossil fuel/renewable world. We will free up significant amounts of fossil fuels with the demand destruction a full “ON” effort could produce. We may extend out the worst of peak oil dynamics. Let’s face it, transition will have to be powered by fossil fuels. If this unfolds right this may allow us some time but how much?

Climate change and other macro systematic issues associated with overpopulation and planetary decline are out there and set to increase dramatically by the time we get further into this transformation/transition effort. IOW, energy is only part of the problem. Do we have the productive strength to power through an energy transformation/transition and take care of these other multidimensional problems? I don’t see it. Remember economic crisis happen. I doubt we have a managed enough global economy to deal with the next one without a devastating panic. Maybe we can put it off for some time but sooner or later economically we will have to have some profound changes. Our current system is a Ponzi and Ponzi arrangements always end. It is a finite planet bubbles do not keep inflating.

Let’s say we have a crisis and we manage it. Let’s say we even take it through a threshold and make tough decisions and work together. That still will be a draining event that will take many years off the effort to leave fossil fuels and construct a dramatically different way of life. I think some areas will get closer than others. Some areas will never leave fossil fuels. Many areas are too poor. Many areas will die as failed experiments of human organization. These are profound times. I find them scary times because there are so many loose ends. Forecast, predictions, and projections have one common theme and that is they are almost never what we think they are the further out we go with them.

We also need to fix our command and control over all this. A major war and all of this is off the table. We must go multipolar with a maximum of cooperation. This will have to happen in a way that accommodates the current status quo. The developed west is never going to give up its way of life to raise up the rest of the world. It is not going to do this because it can’t do this and still do all of what is asked of it. The rest of the world must have the west to do this. There is no decoupling in either direction. This means fairness is not going to be part of this equation.

This also means the US needs to drop its dominance in every facet of our competitive cooperative world. It must drop to a level of coequals. That maybe could happen but looking at the US now I see political civil war. We have a cold war with China and Russia. We have a Europe that does not know what it wants. We have a 3rd world that wants more. We will have to work with what is and the changes will have to be gradual and accommodating or it will never work. Don’t think for a moment a revolutionary change can take place. We are late term civilization that is a climax ecosystem. All niches are filled and brittle to change and dramatic multidimensional change is needed with the likelihood of an economic crisis somewhere in this process.

To me this is all too much to expect our late term civilization to manage. The last decade has amazed me. I was a prepped doomer in 05. I anticipated that something that was the 08 crisis. I never would have thought we could do what we did financially over the last decade. I am now amazed at what we are doing with alternatives. That is a good thing but I am not optimistic economically. Then there is the elephant in the room of overpopulation. Will climate change strike our food production potential? Will widespread famine lead to a cascading spectra of failed states?

Do you see where all this is going? It is going so far into chaos of uncertainty that I doubt the right stuff is possible. I do think all this has given us maybe another decade or two but I doubt much more. Rome declined over centuries. Our late term civilization’s “decline to fall” may be a decade or two. This seems reasonable because of the fact that time has sped up with complexity. We also must acknowledge the possibility of a Byzantium that might occur of a secondary civilization that may result from the fall of our Rome that is the status quo globalism. We also must allow for total collapse. That is a sobering diagnosis but one of limited hope. Limited hope is better than none at all. This still points to a horrible die down ahead at least for many somewhere down the road. Death is ahead somewhere a death that is both human and planetary.

Go Speed Racer on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 2:00 am

Hi Sleep Apneaman,
Really U know where is Bellingham? I know about that place too. Ya some border crossings
up North. Ya I used to go thru there around
2002 and take a big load of firewood across in
my pickup truck AND nobody gave a damn.
Nowadays they’d be presuming I gotz a load of
mexicans hidden underneath the wood, I dont think
U could haul 2000 pounds of wood across the
border anymore. Whole system has gone
way too ‘black helicopter’ authoritarian. Here’s what they call it nowadays:

“Since credit expansion is the lifeblood of the global economy, let’s look at credit expansion.”

“Credit expanded by a monumental $40+ trillion in 1990 – 2008 without any monetary easing (QE) or zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP). The expansion of 2009 – 2017 required 8 long years of massive monetary/fiscal stimulus and ZIRP.”

“Recessions are not mechanical processes; they are ultimately measures of human emotions and assessments: greed/complacency gives way to fear and caution, and denial /magical thinking is brought to Earth by reluctant acceptance of less-than-ideal realities (for example, we really can’t afford to borrow more, it makes no sense to buy negative-interest rate bonds, etc.) Though it’s bad form to mention it, everyone’s favorite signifier of wonderfulness, the stock market, is by most measures overvalued and priced to perfection. Meanwhile, after failing to normalize interest rates and its balance sheet years ago when the economy had already recovered some stability, the Federal Reserve (and a few other central banks) are hurrying to make a grand show of ticking rates a bit higher before the next recession reveals the systemic failure of their 8-year long campaign of permanent monetary stimulus and near-zero rates.”

“The faith in “buy the dips” (i.e. “the Fed has our backs”) is not based on an immutable law of Nature; stocks can (gasp!) actually succumb to gravity. And when they finally do feel the tug of gravity, the belief that “buy the dips” is a permanent strategy will be revealed for what it is: a long, heavily-juiced run that eventually ends. The signs are everywhere for those willing to look: beneath the surface of complacent faith in debt-fueled permanent growth, the economy is stumbling. Recessions are typically identified after months of squinting in the rearview mirror, but we don’t need an official declaration to sense that something has changed.”

joe on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 8:47 am

The US government never denied ufo stories when they tested circular shaped planes and super fast jets etc. Peak demand is the same kind of distraction. Peak demand is what they will call the coming collapse of industrial society. Some, not all, elites want to try at this late stage to save the earth (probobly too late). But they cant just get their employees on
fox and cnn to announce we are fu**ed. Instead it has to be a slow wind down, with corelating reducing social services like health and welfare to make the reduction of demand an organised process. Superbugs will be blamed for reducing lifespan and peak demand will be the reason your grandkids will never own a house or a car. But it’s not all bad, for example, as life becomes simpler, so does lifes stresses. Its worth considering. Thats if the CC driven supercell storms and desert conditions don’t kill us all and our crops first.

GregT on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 9:06 am

“Did The Economy Just Stumble Off A Cliff”

Looks like Charles Hugh Smith is a big advocate of retirement in Southeast Asia.

Fast forward to today, and an entire generation has grown up with extremely poor basic arithmetic skills. Much the same as what texting and e-mail have done to basic language skills. Unintended consequences.

Cloggie on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 9:28 am

Was in Sevastopol, Crimea in 2010. Traveled to Ukrainian border from Holland in 1 day over perfect roads in Germany and Poland…

The roads in western Ukraine were horrible beyond belief; you couldn’t drive faster than 30 kmh. And driving in the dark was out of the question. Therefore it took me two days instead of the planned 1 day to get to Odessa and another day to Sevastopol, the nicest city I saw in the entire Ukraine, now Russia.

There I saw offers for brand new apartments with seaside view for the ridiculous price of $50k.

Made me think. There are alternatives to Manila. Not many people speak English though. You will have to learn their language. 2016 Ukrainian per capita income $8k.

Oops, 38k euro. I could sell my modest but paid-off apartment in Holland for 250k euro and buy 6 apartments in Sevastopol and rent 5 as holiday apartments and live of the rent. Crimea is the most popular holiday destination in Russia for Russians.

Outcast_Searcher on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 10:06 am

Cloggie, sounds like a fun but very high risk venture. When Russia steals your apartments or the economy has a big hit, etc., I’d sure hate to have my net worth and income all tied up in Crimea real estate.

Now, if you could diversify into five or so countries and have this income — that sounds great until we have another big international financial crisis, like we seem to have roughly once a decade or so. But then you have the headache and expense and risk of being remote to 80% of your properties, having a property manager run them, etc. That doesn’t sound risk free or convenient.

It does sound interesting. I just like to sleep soundly. I guess if you hate your work enough, it might be worth the gamble.

Sorry for thinking like this. I retired in middle age (better happy than super rich, IMO) — so I considered various income alternatives, hassles, and risks for awhile.

Cloggie on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 10:12 am

Outcast, there is not a hair left on my head willing to contemplate moving to Crimea. I stubbornly stay were I am until my dying day.

onlooker on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 10:22 am

Nothing epitomizes more the eccentric techno excesses and folly of modern man than the car. We should have never developed motor vehicles in mass especially the personal passenger vehicles. And no where is it more stark and bizarre than in USA, where a whole culture was build with the car in mind. Suburban culture. That is why JHK, said that American Suburban culture was the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of humanity. He gets no objection from me.

Kenz300 on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 11:43 am

The future is electric transportation.
No emissions.

Go Speed Racer on Thu, 24th Aug 2017 2:17 pm

The future is steam engine cars.
Powered by a boiler, that you put
in chunks of old sofa cushions.

There ya go cloggen-fraud, another pro-BAU writer has declared the cars-is-dead, and that fleets of automated thingies that look-exactly-like cars-but-really-aren’t are already plying the roadways or will be ‘soon'(really). Even ‘OPEC’ says so according to this article, and we all now how credible that org is.

Now that your proselytizing has finally paid off in spades, you can finally retire from posting endless links here that dont even read, and seldom support your many dubious assertions. Now that you are vindicated you no longer have to spend endless hours here yapping endlessly about flying cars, electric aircraft, ocean going ships that remain in service for centuries, solar roads, and all the other patent NONsense you cant stop peddling.

IN any event I cant say we’ll be sad to see you leaving exactly, but good-bye cloggen-fraud and good luck. Enjoy your robo-car, and dont let it drive you in the Sea of Galilee or anything while your asleep in the back seat, ok?

Cloggie on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 2:06 am

IN any event I cant say we’ll be sad to see you leaving exactly

The local disciple of Louis Farrakhan here likes to think he has a mandate to speak for everybody else.

And for the rest the usual I-do-not-believe-in-anything attitude, the sole reason why North-America will go flat on its face. Doomers wherever you look. Too many Anynomouse types dragging the country into the mud, pun intended.

Enjoy your last years in the European world, the end is in sight. But hey, no worries, Eurasia is going to need folks who can read and write a little or steer a diesel-truck and perhaps one day you will end up on a Eurasian pay-roll to do some proxy work in Africa for us in an attempt to lift that sad continent a little and keep it from quadrupling.

Exclusive: Tesla’s ‘long-haul’ electric truck aims for 200 to 300 miles on a charge

But folks, repeat after me: it is never going to work, we are all f* and are all going to die. Serious!

pinkdotR on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 10:47 am

I would love to see 5.6 x reduction of number of cars on the roads but I cannot imagine how we can achieve that by replacing owned cars with autonomous vehicles and TaaS model.

Everybody says owned cars are parked for 90-95% of their lifetime and shared cars can be used many times more effectively. One HUGE issue not being taken under consideration is that most of the cars are parked at the same time – night and midday and most of the cars are in use at the same time – in the morning and in the afternoon when most of their owners/users go to work or back home. OK, there are flexible work hours but how can a single TaaS autonomous car get 5.6 times more people to work/back home than a single owned car? 2 times more would be a good result IMHO.

I believe we can and we have to reduce the number of cars but not by everyone changing their own car to shared car but by changing to train/tram/bus/bike/walking.

MASTERMIND on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 2:20 pm

Here is a picture where mak1 the Asian carp lives? He left the US for this? wow he must have really lost his mind once his wife left him.

a big problem with phils is suicide shower and diseases. a lot of diseases are food borne. i think we should ban permaculture and maybe eventually develop a portable bioreactor of sort. this way we can just plug in and go. people think this may be undoable or whatever but considering places like the phils where food borne illnesses is a major problem.

digestion is hard work and our body don’t always get it right. we need machines to do it for us.

And MM, not everything revolves around material/physical well being. It is also about having people around you with whom you can develop comradeship, having peace of mind as in not so much crime etc., being able to have freedom and time for leisurely activities rather than having to work so much for the Man. Living a simple life without the urges and temptations that modern rich countries incite. So, it goes beyond what we just see.

Cloggie on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 3:35 pm

“train/tram/bus/bike/walking.”

BMW

BusMetroWalk

Old Canadian joke.

rockman on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 3:58 pm

Davy – “These short popcorn fart comments stink.” You really shouldn’t be so harsh with those folks, buddy. When one has no facts to support their positions that’s the best they can offer. Remember the old thought: Better to be suspected the fool by remaining quiet and not prove it by speaking. LOL.

Davy on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 6:42 pm

Rock, where are you going to ride the storm out you old storm trooper?

paulretard, you keep copying and pasting the same stupid remarks about the Ps. Do you want me to paste the same reply as last time?

Do you have some phobia about Asia? If so, you can blame your conditioning on your masters. I could list the deaths in the US again but how about the fast growing drug problem or the increasing suicides there? Riots? Government breakdown? Obesity related deaths climbing? Poverty spreading? DEBT? Etc.

When your country is cleaned up of its mess, come back and chat. LOL

Makati1 on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 7:20 pm

If it takes more than a short paragraph or two to get your point across, you are bloviating.

For instance: “There are 4543 words in the original, unamended Constitution, including the signatures. The Declaration has 1458 words.” That has bloviated into: The current number of laws in the US is unknown. “The Internal Revenue Code alone, first codified in 1874, contains more than 3.4 million words and, if printed 60 lines to the page, is more than 7,500 pages long. There are about 20,000 laws just governing the use and ownership of guns. .. From the start of 2000 through 2007, Congress had created at least 452 new crimes, so that at that time the total number of Federal crimes exceeded 4,450.” Somewhere I read that the total of all laws in the FAS is over 600,000. You break laws everyday and don’t know it.

The Gettysburg address has 272 words. Less than Davy’s bloviating articles but meaningful and real.

Yep! The FAS, land of the free. LMAO

Davy on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 7:43 pm

makat, you are unable to write anything beyond 1 short paragraph that makes sense.

“One of the worst things that can happen to a wind farm is too much wind. Hurricane Harvey was packing top winds of 110 miles (175 kilometers) an hour on Friday, according to a National Hurricane Center advisory. That’s twice the 55 miles-an-hour speed that prompts many turbines to shut off. The result: The storm could knock out between 2.1 and 3.6 gigawatts of power near the Texas coast, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.”

Makati1 on Fri, 25th Aug 2017 8:35 pm

Davy, I don’t need long bloviating diatribes to try to get my thoughts across to the intelligent. Anyone who needs everything spelled out in monosyllables is to stupid to understand anyway.